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A group of scientists representing the British and Japanese universities, the study concluded that the hobby of online gaming is not analogous to the «full» of drug or alcohol addiction. Detailed description of the study published by scientific online journal PeerJ.

Scientists believe that online games need «gamers» are not in themselves, but for the blunting of the sense of social or psychological discomfort, RIA Novosti reported.

«Our observations show that gaming can help people who are in an unpleasant situation, to forget about it. It is not some new form of psychological dependence. Accordingly, if the person is not satisfied with his life, then gaming becomes attractive to him and Vice versa,» said one of the authors of the study, Netta Weinstein from the School of psychology, Cardiff University (UK). The research team also included representatives of the University of Oxford (UK) and University of Technology Kochi (Japan).

Many opponents of computer games believe that their network varieties can develop a certain group of people addiction similar to narcotic. Such «gamers» as such people often refuse all forms of contact with society, work and study in order to spend all your free time in the virtual world.

Weinstein and her colleagues checked whether this is actually getting a group of about six thousand volunteers, young people aged 20-40 years, roughly half of which was fond of online games and was considered to be victims of «Internet gambling» their friends and parents, and others never touched like this.

Those and other volunteers agreed to speak with scientists and answer a series of questions related to their attitude towards the game and what is happening in their personal and professional life. After about six months, the researchers conducted a re-survey and compared their results.

As noted by Weinstein, her team did not find significant differences in behavior and lifestyle and alleged «gamers», and the other volunteers. According to her, they were characterized by an equal income, and they are about equally apply to friends, family, work and other mundane things.

The only big difference was how happy feel «gamers» and the remaining volunteers – as they say themselves when they started «hanging out» in the network, not because they liked the process itself, and in order to distract from any serious problems at work and in personal life.

Only 1% of «gamers» said that the game forced them to quit or to bring friends or the lack of access to a computer, console or phone makes them feel anxious. An even smaller number of people, about 0.3%, said that gaming has caused serious problems in their lives. Moreover, those unfortunate people who have managed to get rid of feelings of dissatisfaction during the six months between surveys, usually changed their attitude towards the game and stopped getting involved with them.

All this, according to Weinstein, says that «gambling» is not a real addiction, like alcoholism and drug addiction – people start to play online game not for the sake of gameplay, but because of the desire to escape from the real problems in the virtual world.

According to scientists, using the «gamers» should be to improve their quality of life, not to deprive them of access to the games. Clinical examination in such cases will not help.

Scientists: the fascination with computer games is not a real addiction 27.10.2017